Glad you’re okay, Boogie.
Tiring day, I had a rather active yoga class this morning, walked 3 miles this afternoon, decided to write a tutorial so I don’t have to do it tomorrow and then had an evening online meeting. Just off to have a relaxing bath before bed.
Boogie: glad to know you are OK. but take care now and keep us posted. Suggest you lay off the vino for a couple of days. Meanwhile we are enbjoying the sunshine here in Cape Town and yesterday went to Simonsytown for late lunch -- which is as far as you can go in SA without falling off. Another week left. Stay well.
I have applied arnica liberally to the bruises, it’s excellent stuff and really soothing. I definitely feel better today ‘tho I have given the Church PP preparation to someone else, I don’t feel like sitting in front of a screen all afternoon.
Grandparents occupations - maternal grandma was a spinner in the cotton mills. Maternal grandfather a weaver. Paternal grandfather was a policeman in Manchester - do you remember the policeman who stood outside the Midland hotel? That was him! I still have his whistle. Paternal grandma worked in a jam factory!
In a complete change of subject: hurrah to Lidl for (eventually) getting "Mothers' Day" correct: http://tinyurl.com/yxhlog7s
I have to spend ages (and more money) finding one that says 'Mothering Sunday'. The Dowager is confused and delusional, but getting that wrong is likely to be one of the (few) things she remembers!
Grandparent's occupations are interesting. My father came from a long line of master carpenters and though that wasn't his chosen career (he ended life as a painter of narrow boat roses and castles) both my brother and son seem to have inherited my grandfathers thick workman's hands and joy of working with wood. My grandmother on that side's family owned a bakery. It was inherited by her brother who drunk the profits and it failed, which was a shame as paternal grandmother had the makings of a good business woman.
On the other side, my grandfather was a professional soldier, who was in the siege of Ladysmith. We have a picture of him in uniform with pillbox hat. Grandmother was a cook/housekeeper who ended up running a café. Apparently grandfather fell in love with her because of the big bow on her uniform encircling her twenty inch waist. @The Intrepid Mrs S - I prefer Mothering Sunday to Mother's Day too, but I'm just pleased to get a card!
@shamwari thanks for all your updates on what you're doing. It brings back happy memories of our Choir heading to Cape Town, back in 2001.
We had a fun evening last night - the kids' school put on a "Disney Spectacular" Showcase, and they all (from p1 to p7) did very well. Suffering for it this morning though, from certain little people being up past their usual bedtime
My (adoptive) mother's Dad was a much-respected Drier of Hops (this is Kent!), in demand on various farms during the season, and something of a master at correctly maintaining the drying-fires in the oast houses. At other times of the year, he was known for his all-round expertise at fruit-farming (this is Kent - it's what we do...).
I'm sorry that I never knew him - he died young (in his 50s) in 1943.
My (birth) mother's Dad, albeit born in Ireland in 1889, was a very early member of the Royal Flying Corps (I think that's the right name - it later became the RAF), being based on the Isle of Sheppey. Alas, at 6 feet 6 inches, he was too tall to fly, and had to be content with being 'ground crew' (albeit of an exalted rank).
Later, he changed career completely by establishing and running Holiday Camps in Devon - no, he was not Billy Butlin!
In the fashion of the times, I guess, both Grandmothers were very much the support and helpmate of their spouses, though my (adoptive) mother's Mum - a widow for 30 years - was also well-known for her soft-fruit growing (her Gooseberry Bushes were famous for miles around!).
Boogie, I don’t like the ancestry ap. it doesn’t always do what I want it to. I prefer the full website version.
My maternal grandmother and my Paternal grandfather were shopkeepers. My parents met because my mum worked in her mum’s greengrocers shop, and my dad used to visit his father’s bike shop next door.
Further back on my mother’s side, the men were agricultural labourers and associated rural trades, but many of them left to work on building the railways. The girls generally went into service, but many worked in the lace industry, some as framework knitters, others in the lace factories. So they reflect the general trends of the times.
My maternal grandfather's first job was with an ostrich feather merchant in London at 5/- a week - not bad at that time. When did the last ostrich feather merchant go out of business? Maybe he didn't! On the Scottish side there were a lot of blacksmiths, with whom I feel greater kinship.
Just so. My (adoptive) mother went into 'service' at the age of 14 (in 1926), but, from what she told me, seems to have been employed by good and sympathetic people. My (adoptive) father was a bit of a wandering star, with two spells in the Army (the first in India during the 30s), later becoming a grocer's boy, and then a grocer (with a typical 50s corner shop) in his own right.
The replica grocer's shop in the Black Country Museum at Dudley is the spitting image of my Dad's shop! A visit there, back in the 90s, was like a trip in a time machine for me.....
Grandparents' occupations:
Maternal - g/father probably worked for Players, having fought his way through the Great War to the rank of RSM. Family history has it that he avoided a battlefield commission by going out and rescuing his lieutenant and winning several medals in the process. Pity it left him with Bright's disease.
g/mother - professional singer, forced to leave the Carl Rosa when they found she was pregnant ( I hasten to add, she was married by this stage...)
Paternal - g/father died at Passchendaele. Nobody left who remembers him.
g/mother - apart from terrorising tradesmen, not a lot.
Perhaps I should do some research. A cousin of mine has documented the maternal line fairly well, but paternal is ever so slightly non-existent. Seems wrong.
My paternal grandfather spent some time with the Ordnance Survey in East Africa and then was a computer for the Admiralty working on astronomical navigation tables, becoming part of the Royal Observatory at Herstmonceux. My paternal grandmother I think did some secretarial work before she married. During the war she did a stint as a billeting officer for the local authority in a town affected by the Baedeker Raids. She gave up that work so that their income would be low enough for my aunt and father to attract bursaries/free places to go to (in his case boarding) school x to give some stability after multiple evacuation moves following my grandfather’s work.
My maternal grandmother was the daughter of a tenant farmer who in the end was able to buy out his landlord. She worked in munitions during the First World War before going on to train as a nurse and becoming a theatre sister. My grandfather after war service, but never sent to the front, trained as a doctor (which is how he met my grandmother). He went into GP practice, initially in the north of England, and then in Surrey where he was cheated by his partners, before going into practice in a coastal town from the min-1930s until he retired in 1969/70.
My maternal grandfather worked on the railways, initially as an engineer and then going into management which is when he provided the train in the film Anna Karenina (I’ve never seen it as I know the ending) and the trains that transported those who were rescued in the Dunkirk evacuation.
My maternal grandmother worked as a shop girl in the posh department store in Southsea.
My paternal grandmother was a scullery maid to an actress (I can’t remember her name, but I remember seeing it listed at Blackpool Tower among the famous). My father and his sister were named after a play that she’d been in (Michael and Mary) and by the time my grandmother had seen the play it was too late to change their names - she hated the play!
My paternal grandfather was a coal deliverer, odd job man, delivery van driver (legend has it that he drove for Barnes Wallace), loveable rogue.
In other news... I am currently hoping that a bread-making disaster comes out ok - I swapped the water and olive oil measurements and it is decidedly dodgy. It’s got another 10 minutes in the oven and I’ll know. I was far more careful making the scones and they are rather yummy... home made scones and jam anyone?
My maternal grandfather worked on the railways, initially as an engineer and then going into management which is when he provided the train in the film Anna Karenina (I’ve never seen it as I know the ending) and the trains that transported those who were rescued in the Dunkirk evacuation. <snip>
My mother remembers her mother waking her up to watch those trains trundling along the railway line at the back of her house. She knew it was a historic moment.
My ancestors on my mother's side (Cable) include a marine who served in Nelson's navy, umbrella makers and cordwainers - leather shoe makers - or to be pedantic, makers of leather shoes. Also, one of the first Wesleyans in Frome.
My paternal grandfather was a grocer, my paternal grandmother a teacher. Maternal grandmother was a nanny until she married and emigrated with my grandfather to Canada. There he worked for Bell telephones which meant when they returned to Britain he worked for the Post office. He looked after the exchange and climbed telegraph poles which scared my Grandma. He had one of those green vans with a ladder on the roof.
I have one document of my maternal grandparents. It is a photograph taken by an itinerant photographer, stopping by it would seem in the middle of an ordinary working day.
My grandfather is standing in his coat and cap and collarless shirt. My grandmother is seated, a sack pinned over her skirts, my two eldest uncles in their smocks at either knee. To the right are the two men and a young lad on the horse. Behind them the farmhouse.
Even if it were not sepia, everything looks fairly muddy. But it is not a picture of rural poverty - by the standards of the time and place - rural Ireland in the early 20th C - it depicts some prosperity; two farmhands and a gossoon. A stone and slate house with two storeys.
Meanwhile, about 50 miles north my paternal grandparents were probably doing much the same thing.
Their children - my parents - had wider lives. My mother travelled to England - England! - and packed munitions in Bedfordshire. She came back to Belfast in time to be blitzed there as well. At one point she was cook housekeeper to a wealthy family - but left because there was notenough to do. Then she was a seamstress in a big department store.
My father meanwhile had left the land and joined the police. Somewhere in the blacked out streets they met - my mother was prone to getting offers from the constabulary to see her and her bicycle safely home.
When did the last ostrich feather merchant go out of business? .
I love hearing about older occupations. How does one become an ostrich merchant?
Paternal (Mauritian) Granddad did varying things including building, but was generally a chancer and Gran was a housewife trying to keep 6 (living) children fed while husband was out pissing about.
Maternal (Belgian) Gran was also mostly more of a house spouse, looking after her older grandkids for working daughter/daughter-in-law with a bit of . Maternal (British)Granddad was a Royal Engineer in WWII (after not being able to join the RAF for being too short, they should have averaged him out with @Bishops Finger 's Granddad), then fixed electricity pylons in Belgium for a couple of decades before moving back to the UK, blowing stuff up down a pit and a spot of portering at the local mental hospital at which a large percentage of the rest of my family were nurses. WW once said that his uncle worked at said hospital and I often wondered if they knew each other.
My grandparents had fairly mundane occupations: maternal GF served in Mesopotamia in WW1 (I don't know whether voluntarily or by conscription). His family had a joinery/undertaker's business in Ayrshire, and he trained as a joiner, but he developed a condition (possibly MS) in his 30s and was unable to work; maternal GM was a French polisher at (I think) the shipyard in Greenock. Paternal GF was a bus driver (my dad learned to drive, clandestinely, in his father's bus during the war); paternal GM went into domestic service before getting married. After my GF died (in his 50s), she moved to where my parents lived and ran a small B&B.
* * * * *
It's a v. wet day here (no bad thing, as it's helping to clear the sn*w). After D's recital we went to the Palate, a favourite restaurant that we hadn't been to for ages, and had a v. nice lunch (spicy shrimp pasta for me, soup and roast lamb panini for him).
Now going to fix some nibblements for supper - chicken sandwich for him, tomato and avocado salad for me.
I was awake at 5am - the joys of hypomania! Try in to relax now before going for a walk. Some marking to do this morning.
Other half has an invite to a local party in the village this evening but I’m not sure I’ll want to go. I don’t do much socialising these days and I’m going to be very tired, what with teaching last night and waking early this morning. My mania is made worse if I get tired and socialising is likely to be an unwelcome stimulant. We’ll have to see.
Hope it isn't as bad as you fear, Heavenlyannie. I've been up since 6, done a load of washing, and (shock horror) been for a walk. The first since Christmas thanks to flu, viral this and bronchial that. All of 2 miles, and I'm knackered.
But this will continue. I might ditch the stick, though, as I didn't need it and it spooked a couple of dogs.
My grandparents as follows:
Maternal: Grandfather was a soldier (Royal Dragoons, now the Blues & Royals) then he farmed; Grandmother didn't have paid work outside the home either before or after marriage.
Parental: Grandfather was a clergyman; Grandmother ran the house after the death of her mother (she was the oldest) and helped her father run the household, etc, before she married and had her own children.
Checked the recipe for tonight’s dinner party and saw it should have been put in the marinade last night (but I couldn’t have done it then as had electricians knocking holes in the kitchen walls). So prepped two oven dishes of chicken, celery, orange, lemon, mustard and wine. Had breakfast.
Washed plaster/brick dust off everything.
Have put the beetroot on to cook (for a relish) and will presently make trout and cream cheese mulch.
@Firenze you are brave having a dinner party while you have builders in the kitchen - I even deferred a small dinner party until after my loo/utility was completed.
Today so far I've made lunch (burgers, one beef, one bean, oven chips, crispy kale, carrot salad followed by fruit) and supper, vegan cream of mushroom soup to be followed by rhubarb crumble. Taken my daughter out for a wander. I'm going to be interested to see how the mushroom soup turns out.
Burgers are homemade - I batch make them, cook one and freeze the rest, oven chips are potato wedges sprinkled with oil and baked at the same time as the burgers and kale.
Wednesday was good, the rheumatologist my daughter saw was lovely and efficient, the appointment for next year has already come through, so the other things are going to be in train and he's confirmed the diagnosis we've all been working to. And we got in a walk through the Forest from one of the neighbouring tube stations to the hospital - bus to the other side and tube home.
g/mother - professional singer, forced to leave the Carl Rosa when they found she was pregnant ( I hasten to add, she was married by this stage...)
Mr RoS's maternal grandmother sang with the Carl Rosa. I can't say exactly when as the year, if mentioned, in her press cuttings, has been deleted, or altered - but it must have been in the 1920s.
I think singing Mimi at The Theatre Royal, Nottingham in April 19?? was the high point of her career, as we have a pastel portrait of her in that rôle hanging in our spare room.
It still seems to be somewhat moist round these parts; it absolutely tipped it down yesterday and last night, giving nearly an inch of precipitation (some of it was sn*w and freezing rain). All fine by me if it shifts the sn*w - we can actually see bits of deck now!
Shepherd's PIE has been consumed for lunch, and I'm now contemplating the best way of cooking the lamb-shank for tomorrow so that it can be ready not too long after we get home from church. As it isn't very big, I think it might get lost in the slow-cooker (which is quite a big one), so I may just do it in a casserole in a low oven and re-heat it tomorrow.
You can put smaller pots in the slow cooker containing the food and use the slow cooker as a water bath. I've done that for several things in pots before now.
Hmmm ... never thought of that! It's done now - an hour and a half in a cast-iron casserole in a medium oven seems to have done the trick. It should take about the same time to re-heat it as to make a mound of mashed potatoes to go with it - yum!
* * * * *
In other news, Great-Auntie Piglet strikes again - my great-nephew Archie was born earlier today (Saturday).
I'm really chuffed about the name - it's after my grandfather (his great-great-grandfather - the joiner who nearly emigrated to America); when his father (my nephew) was very small, he looked very like Grandad from certain angles, so it's kind of appropriate.
Now I can't wait for a chance to go over the Pond and meet him!
Let us pond-er your joy, and be joyful with you, Great-Auntie Piglet!
Freezing, over here, at night, while sunny again with up to 19°C during the day, similar to Saturday and before that, which is fairly pleasant. However: the warm, sunny weather is bound to continue for a further few days, and with last year's droughtishness that has not (yet) been compensated for by the needed weeks (!) of steady rain, well, not sure how this is going to turn out.
But I guess we'll take it as it comes. For now, the ever longer days are great, and invigorating. Have a happy Sunday, everyone!
I’m skipping Church as my ribs are still rather sore and I’ve got a busy afternoon coming up driving for Contact the Elderly. So I’m resting up until then. I’ve taken off the ‘head injury alert’ wristband as the hospital said I could after two full days.
Recovery time today. Had my Daughters 50th party yesterday; lunch into the evening and family came from all over South Africa. Might go to Kalk Bay later.
Glorious day of singing yesterday, the joyful Creation (Haydn), taken at a fast pace by our exuberant Director of Music.
In the afternoon rehearsal there was a major police incident in town. Rumours abound as to the cause (anti- Br-x-t protests, man with a machete, suicide on the tram?) , but for a while we were locked in the hall for our own protection as armed police swarmed around outside. A nearby shoppping mall was evacuated. All calmed down, so did not affect attendance at the actual concert, thankfully.
It's a glorious day here - sunny and currently 4°, but pootling towards 7°, which feels decidedly springy. It's due to be cooler tomorrow, but later in the week we're being promised double figures!!!
Must start looking out my sandals** ...
* obviously you don't have to answer that if you'd rather not!
** well, maybe not quite - as the château faces North, the path is the last bit to lose its sn*w, and at the moment it's a big Patch of Treachery™. However, I ordered a pair of shoes over the interweb a few weeks ago, and by the time they arrive, I might be able to wear them. I'm so fed up of having to wear boots!
This morning I was given a rather wilted stem of kale by someone who knows I make crisps, and they came out very well with no hint of their wiltedness. As the oven I made a batch of scones for the freezer, although there are still some for virtual tasting with jam. I seem to be in a scone phase.
Right now the house alarm of a nearby empty buy-to-let is screaming away. No one knows how to contact the owner. A neighbour has offered to shoot it.
Gotta love a good, ‘told ya so’ moment! Although if this also means no heating then I hope you have a few blankets to hand. It is fairly mild around these parts but not exactly warm.
I’ve just finished Tearfund’s mean bean challenge. Please hit me up with all your veg recipes. I wasn’t sure what was going on in my brain when the thing I missed most was cauliflower! I now have a full head of cauliflower, celery, some slightly bendy carrots, tomatoes & courgettes sat in my fridge waiting to rejuvenate me!
Strangely enough, I’m not put off rice and beans but rather protective over them so they are by no means excluded!
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Tiring day, I had a rather active yoga class this morning, walked 3 miles this afternoon, decided to write a tutorial so I don’t have to do it tomorrow and then had an evening online meeting. Just off to have a relaxing bath before bed.
What Sarasa said!
Seriously though, take it easy if you can - you've probably given yourself quite a fright!
I have applied arnica liberally to the bruises, it’s excellent stuff and really soothing. I definitely feel better today ‘tho I have given the Church PP preparation to someone else, I don’t feel like sitting in front of a screen all afternoon.
Grandparents occupations - maternal grandma was a spinner in the cotton mills. Maternal grandfather a weaver. Paternal grandfather was a policeman in Manchester - do you remember the policeman who stood outside the Midland hotel? That was him! I still have his whistle. Paternal grandma worked in a jam factory!
I have to spend ages (and more money) finding one that says 'Mothering Sunday'. The Dowager is confused and delusional, but getting that wrong is likely to be one of the (few) things she remembers!
Mrs. S, who has found one in W**tr*s*
On the other side, my grandfather was a professional soldier, who was in the siege of Ladysmith. We have a picture of him in uniform with pillbox hat. Grandmother was a cook/housekeeper who ended up running a café. Apparently grandfather fell in love with her because of the big bow on her uniform encircling her twenty inch waist.
@The Intrepid Mrs S - I prefer Mothering Sunday to Mother's Day too, but I'm just pleased to get a card!
We had a fun evening last night - the kids' school put on a "Disney Spectacular" Showcase, and they all (from p1 to p7) did very well. Suffering for it this morning though, from certain little people being up past their usual bedtime
I’d like to make a start for my brother’s birthday. He loves such stuff and I’m more ineterested than I used to be.
Found it - thanks!
My (adoptive) mother's Dad was a much-respected Drier of Hops (this is Kent!), in demand on various farms during the season, and something of a master at correctly maintaining the drying-fires in the oast houses. At other times of the year, he was known for his all-round expertise at fruit-farming (this is Kent - it's what we do...).
I'm sorry that I never knew him - he died young (in his 50s) in 1943.
My (birth) mother's Dad, albeit born in Ireland in 1889, was a very early member of the Royal Flying Corps (I think that's the right name - it later became the RAF), being based on the Isle of Sheppey. Alas, at 6 feet 6 inches, he was too tall to fly, and had to be content with being 'ground crew' (albeit of an exalted rank).
Later, he changed career completely by establishing and running Holiday Camps in Devon - no, he was not Billy Butlin!
In the fashion of the times, I guess, both Grandmothers were very much the support and helpmate of their spouses, though my (adoptive) mother's Mum - a widow for 30 years - was also well-known for her soft-fruit growing (her Gooseberry Bushes were famous for miles around!).
My maternal grandmother and my Paternal grandfather were shopkeepers. My parents met because my mum worked in her mum’s greengrocers shop, and my dad used to visit his father’s bike shop next door.
Further back on my mother’s side, the men were agricultural labourers and associated rural trades, but many of them left to work on building the railways. The girls generally went into service, but many worked in the lace industry, some as framework knitters, others in the lace factories. So they reflect the general trends of the times.
The replica grocer's shop in the Black Country Museum at Dudley is the spitting image of my Dad's shop! A visit there, back in the 90s, was like a trip in a time machine for me.....
Maternal - g/father probably worked for Players, having fought his way through the Great War to the rank of RSM. Family history has it that he avoided a battlefield commission by going out and rescuing his lieutenant and winning several medals in the process. Pity it left him with Bright's disease.
g/mother - professional singer, forced to leave the Carl Rosa when they found she was pregnant ( I hasten to add, she was married by this stage...)
Paternal - g/father died at Passchendaele. Nobody left who remembers him.
g/mother - apart from terrorising tradesmen, not a lot.
Perhaps I should do some research. A cousin of mine has documented the maternal line fairly well, but paternal is ever so slightly non-existent. Seems wrong.
My maternal grandmother was the daughter of a tenant farmer who in the end was able to buy out his landlord. She worked in munitions during the First World War before going on to train as a nurse and becoming a theatre sister. My grandfather after war service, but never sent to the front, trained as a doctor (which is how he met my grandmother). He went into GP practice, initially in the north of England, and then in Surrey where he was cheated by his partners, before going into practice in a coastal town from the min-1930s until he retired in 1969/70.
My maternal grandmother worked as a shop girl in the posh department store in Southsea.
My paternal grandmother was a scullery maid to an actress (I can’t remember her name, but I remember seeing it listed at Blackpool Tower among the famous). My father and his sister were named after a play that she’d been in (Michael and Mary) and by the time my grandmother had seen the play it was too late to change their names - she hated the play!
My paternal grandfather was a coal deliverer, odd job man, delivery van driver (legend has it that he drove for Barnes Wallace), loveable rogue.
In other news... I am currently hoping that a bread-making disaster comes out ok - I swapped the water and olive oil measurements and it is decidedly dodgy. It’s got another 10 minutes in the oven and I’ll know. I was far more careful making the scones and they are rather yummy... home made scones and jam anyone?
My grandfather is standing in his coat and cap and collarless shirt. My grandmother is seated, a sack pinned over her skirts, my two eldest uncles in their smocks at either knee. To the right are the two men and a young lad on the horse. Behind them the farmhouse.
Even if it were not sepia, everything looks fairly muddy. But it is not a picture of rural poverty - by the standards of the time and place - rural Ireland in the early 20th C - it depicts some prosperity; two farmhands and a gossoon. A stone and slate house with two storeys.
Meanwhile, about 50 miles north my paternal grandparents were probably doing much the same thing.
Their children - my parents - had wider lives. My mother travelled to England - England! - and packed munitions in Bedfordshire. She came back to Belfast in time to be blitzed there as well. At one point she was cook housekeeper to a wealthy family - but left because there was notenough to do. Then she was a seamstress in a big department store.
My father meanwhile had left the land and joined the police. Somewhere in the blacked out streets they met - my mother was prone to getting offers from the constabulary to see her and her bicycle safely home.
Paternal (Mauritian) Granddad did varying things including building, but was generally a chancer and Gran was a housewife trying to keep 6 (living) children fed while husband was out pissing about.
Maternal (Belgian) Gran was also mostly more of a house spouse, looking after her older grandkids for working daughter/daughter-in-law with a bit of . Maternal (British)Granddad was a Royal Engineer in WWII (after not being able to join the RAF for being too short, they should have averaged him out with @Bishops Finger 's Granddad), then fixed electricity pylons in Belgium for a couple of decades before moving back to the UK, blowing stuff up down a pit and a spot of portering at the local mental hospital at which a large percentage of the rest of my family were nurses. WW once said that his uncle worked at said hospital and I often wondered if they knew each other.
My grandparents had fairly mundane occupations: maternal GF served in Mesopotamia in WW1 (I don't know whether voluntarily or by conscription). His family had a joinery/undertaker's business in Ayrshire, and he trained as a joiner, but he developed a condition (possibly MS) in his 30s and was unable to work; maternal GM was a French polisher at (I think) the shipyard in Greenock. Paternal GF was a bus driver (my dad learned to drive, clandestinely, in his father's bus during the war); paternal GM went into domestic service before getting married. After my GF died (in his 50s), she moved to where my parents lived and ran a small B&B.
* * * * *
It's a v. wet day here (no bad thing, as it's helping to clear the sn*w). After D's recital we went to the Palate, a favourite restaurant that we hadn't been to for ages, and had a v. nice lunch (spicy shrimp pasta for me, soup and roast lamb panini for him).
Now going to fix some nibblements for supper - chicken sandwich for him, tomato and avocado salad for me.
Other half has an invite to a local party in the village this evening but I’m not sure I’ll want to go. I don’t do much socialising these days and I’m going to be very tired, what with teaching last night and waking early this morning. My mania is made worse if I get tired and socialising is likely to be an unwelcome stimulant. We’ll have to see.
But this will continue. I might ditch the stick, though, as I didn't need it and it spooked a couple of dogs.
Maternal: Grandfather was a soldier (Royal Dragoons, now the Blues & Royals) then he farmed; Grandmother didn't have paid work outside the home either before or after marriage.
Parental: Grandfather was a clergyman; Grandmother ran the house after the death of her mother (she was the oldest) and helped her father run the household, etc, before she married and had her own children.
None of my family would be here if Tom, her first husband, had lived. Odd thought that - and I’m sure many families are in the same boat.
What if......?? is a good start to an imaginative short story or something...
Checked the recipe for tonight’s dinner party and saw it should have been put in the marinade last night (but I couldn’t have done it then as had electricians knocking holes in the kitchen walls). So prepped two oven dishes of chicken, celery, orange, lemon, mustard and wine. Had breakfast.
Washed plaster/brick dust off everything.
Have put the beetroot on to cook (for a relish) and will presently make trout and cream cheese mulch.
May have a nap.
Burgers are homemade - I batch make them, cook one and freeze the rest, oven chips are potato wedges sprinkled with oil and baked at the same time as the burgers and kale.
Wednesday was good, the rheumatologist my daughter saw was lovely and efficient, the appointment for next year has already come through, so the other things are going to be in train and he's confirmed the diagnosis we've all been working to. And we got in a walk through the Forest from one of the neighbouring tube stations to the hospital - bus to the other side and tube home.
I think singing Mimi at The Theatre Royal, Nottingham in April 19?? was the high point of her career, as we have a pastel portrait of her in that rôle hanging in our spare room.
Shepherd's PIE has been consumed for lunch, and I'm now contemplating the best way of cooking the lamb-shank for tomorrow so that it can be ready not too long after we get home from church. As it isn't very big, I think it might get lost in the slow-cooker (which is quite a big one), so I may just do it in a casserole in a low oven and re-heat it tomorrow.
* * * * *
In other news, Great-Auntie Piglet strikes again - my great-nephew Archie was born earlier today (Saturday).
I'm really chuffed about the name - it's after my grandfather (his great-great-grandfather - the joiner who nearly emigrated to America); when his father (my nephew) was very small, he looked very like Grandad from certain angles, so it's kind of appropriate.
Now I can't wait for a chance to go over the Pond and meet him!
Freezing, over here, at night, while sunny again with up to 19°C during the day, similar to Saturday and before that, which is fairly pleasant. However: the warm, sunny weather is bound to continue for a further few days, and with last year's droughtishness that has not (yet) been compensated for by the needed weeks (!) of steady rain, well, not sure how this is going to turn out.
But I guess we'll take it as it comes. For now, the ever longer days are great, and invigorating. Have a happy Sunday, everyone!
I’m skipping Church as my ribs are still rather sore and I’ve got a busy afternoon coming up driving for Contact the Elderly. So I’m resting up until then. I’ve taken off the ‘head injury alert’ wristband as the hospital said I could after two full days.
In the afternoon rehearsal there was a major police incident in town. Rumours abound as to the cause (anti- Br-x-t protests, man with a machete, suicide on the tram?) , but for a while we were locked in the hall for our own protection as armed police swarmed around outside. A nearby shoppping mall was evacuated. All calmed down, so did not affect attendance at the actual concert, thankfully.
@Boogie - what an excellent thing to do. Don't be tiring yourself out though - take it easy!
Many happy returns, @shamwari 's daughter!
It's a glorious day here - sunny and currently 4°, but pootling towards 7°, which feels decidedly springy. It's due to be cooler tomorrow, but later in the week we're being promised double figures!!!
Must start looking out my sandals** ...
* obviously you don't have to answer that if you'd rather not!
** well, maybe not quite - as the château faces North, the path is the last bit to lose its sn*w, and at the moment it's a big Patch of Treachery™. However, I ordered a pair of shoes over the interweb a few weeks ago, and by the time they arrive, I might be able to wear them. I'm so fed up of having to wear boots!
Right now the house alarm of a nearby empty buy-to-let is screaming away. No one knows how to contact the owner. A neighbour has offered to shoot it.
I have a heavy duty battery charger which keeps my iPad going. Mr Boogs mocked when I bought it - who’s laughing now?!
I’ve just finished Tearfund’s mean bean challenge. Please hit me up with all your veg recipes. I wasn’t sure what was going on in my brain when the thing I missed most was cauliflower! I now have a full head of cauliflower, celery, some slightly bendy carrots, tomatoes & courgettes sat in my fridge waiting to rejuvenate me!
Strangely enough, I’m not put off rice and beans but rather protective over them so they are by no means excluded!